books

Raymond Chandler’s 1944 essay in The Atlantic Magazine, The Simple Art of Murder, is a great touchstone for anyone writing genre fiction. Chandler was incredibly influential. He was one of [...]

Writing’s so easy, right? There’s a quote by Hemingway: There’s nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed. And who wants to go through the pain and [...]

Yes, that is a noose, and that is the River Thames. And yes, the gallows’ crossbeam is indeed aimed at the financial centre, Canary Wharf. The gallows is part of the Prospect of Whitby, one [...]

At a quarter to ten on the morning of May 19, 1811, bells began to sound throughout the neighbourhood of New York around Chatham Street and the City Hall. It being a Sunday, not many people paid [...]

When the Revolutionary War ended in 1783 and the King’s soldiers departed for England, the King’s laws went with them. Good riddance, most people said. British rule had been oppressive, [...]

“As far as I can tell, the first murder in New England was committed in 1630 with a gun.” Thomas McDade, The Annals of Murder. John Billington was probably not the first man to commit [...]

On a summer’s day in 1799, a group of men were driving cattle from Kentucky to Virginia, along a road known as Boone’s Trace, when the cows suddenly quit the road and rushed into the woods. Once [...]

I’m reading a great book right now called Publishing 101, by Jane Friedman. She is a columnist with Publishers Weekly and writes a very useful blog at JaneFriedman.com. She’s been in [...]

I had always thought of ‘murder in the first degree’ as something dating back to mediaeval times in England. It certainly has that ring to it. But it turns out, it’s not an [...]

I reviewed New Yorker writer Patrick Radden Keefe’s book Say Nothing, A True Story of Murder and Memory In Northern Ireland, for NPR. Say Nothing is the story of the abduction and murder of [...]